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    Letter To President Biden About William Burns 51021

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    Natalie Winters
    The letter urges President Biden to ask for the resignation of William Burns as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It argues that Burns lied under oath during his Senate confirmation hearings about cutting ties with Chinese Communist Party-linked groups. Specifically, Burns' previous organization Carnegie continued collaborating with CUSEF, a United Front group, on a project through 2021. The letter provides details of Chinese influence at Carnegie during Burns' tenure and his welcoming of individuals connected to Chinese propaganda efforts onto Carnegie's board and partnerships. It concludes Burns showed poor judgment that could jeopardize national security in his new role at the CIA.

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    Letter To President Biden About William Burns 51021

    Uploaded by

    Natalie Winters
    80K views4 pages
    The letter urges President Biden to ask for the resignation of William Burns as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It argues that Burns lied under oath during his Senate confirmation hearings about cutting ties with Chinese Communist Party-linked groups. Specifically, Burns' previous organization Carnegie continued collaborating with CUSEF, a United Front group, on a project through 2021. The letter provides details of Chinese influence at Carnegie during Burns' tenure and his welcoming of individuals connected to Chinese propaganda efforts onto Carnegie's board and partnerships. It concludes Burns showed poor judgment that could jeopardize national security in his new role at the CIA.

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    Letter to President Biden About William Burns 51021

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    Letter to President Biden About William Burns 51021

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    The letter urges President Biden to ask for the resignation of William Burns as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It argues that Burns lied under oath during his Senate confirmation hearings about cutting ties with Chinese Communist Party-linked groups. Specifically, Burns' previous organization Carnegie continued collaborating with CUSEF, a United Front group, on a project through 2021. The letter provides details of Chinese influence at Carnegie during Burns' tenure and his welcoming of individuals connected to Chinese propaganda efforts onto Carnegie's board and partnerships. It concludes Burns showed poor judgment that could jeopardize national security in his new role at the CIA.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    80K views4 pages

    Letter To President Biden About William Burns 51021

    Uploaded by

    Natalie Winters
    The letter urges President Biden to ask for the resignation of William Burns as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It argues that Burns lied under oath during his Senate confirmation hearings about cutting ties with Chinese Communist Party-linked groups. Specifically, Burns' previous organization Carnegie continued collaborating with CUSEF, a United Front group, on a project through 2021. The letter provides details of Chinese influence at Carnegie during Burns' tenure and his welcoming of individuals connected to Chinese propaganda efforts onto Carnegie's board and partnerships. It concludes Burns showed poor judgment that could jeopardize national security in his new role at the CIA.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
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    The letter expresses concerns about undue Chinese influence on US organizations and individuals and calls for the resignation of CIA Director William Burns due to his past relationships.

    Concerns are raised that Burns misrepresented his dealings with Chinese organizations in Senate testimony and ignored risks of partnering with Chinese influence operations.

    The Carnegie Endowment had ongoing relationships with Chinese government-linked organizations, including receiving funds, well after Burns claimed to have cut ties.

    10 May 2021

    Hon. Joe Biden


    The White House
    1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
    Washington, D.C. 20510

    Dear Mr. President:

    The Committee on the Present Danger: China has, since its founding in March 2019, warned
    against the “unrestricted warfare” in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been
    engaged against this country and the Free World more generally. Unfortunately, during the
    intervening period, the magnitude of the danger posed by the CCP has only grown, as has the
    evidence of its success in conducting influence operations designed to obscure that reality.

    Of particular concern is the extent to which U.S. individuals in the private sector and government
    and American non-governmental organizations, universities, corporations and news organizations
    have been compromised by the Chinese Communist Party’s intelligence services and its so-called
    “United Front Work Department.” Such compromises have been achieved via arrangements that
    include: contributions from or contracts with Chinese nationals, businesses or organizations; the
    Thousand Talents Program recruitment; Confucius Institutes on our college campuses and in K-12
    curricula; newspaper advertising supplements, etc.

    Before his nomination to become Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns served
    as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a prominent Washington-based
    think tank. On Mr. Burn’s watch, the Endowment received funds from CCP-tied entities and put a
    United Front operative on its Board of Trustees. In our view, these relationships should have
    precluded an individual from holding even a basic security clearance, let alone serving in so
    sensitive a position as the leader of America’s preeminent intelligence organization.

    We learned recently, moreover, that Mr. Burns seriously misrepresented in sworn testimony to
    the United States Senate the nature and timing of his dealings with such Chinese Communist
    Party-associated persons and organizations. The National Pulse reported on April 30th:

    Despite President Biden’s Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns testifying he cut ties
    to a Chinese Communist Party-linked influence group, The National Pulse can reveal the
    controversial relationship between the Carnegie Endowment – previously led by Burns – and
    the Chinese Communist influence group continued through 2021.
    Burns became president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in March 2015
    and claimed, during Senate confirmation hearings, that he merely “inherited” the think tank’s
    longstanding relationship with the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF).

    CUSEF is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, which seeks
    “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its
    ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt
    positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies,” according to the U.S. government.

    Purporting to be “increasingly worried about the expansion of Chinese influence operations,”


    Burns, who currently leads the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), was adamant [before the
    Senate that] he cut Carnegie’s ties with CUSEF “not long after” he began his tenure.

    Burn’s statements, however, are at odds with a report published by the Carnegie Endowment
    on April 8th, 2021: “China-U.S. Cyber-Nuclear C3 Stability.”

    “This paper was produced through a three-year dialogue led by Carnegie and the Shanghai
    Institute for International Studies, with inputs and review provided by American and Chinese
    technical and military experts,” a Carnegie press release reads, revealing the project began in
    2018.

    The Shanghai-based, Chinese Communist Party-run think tank working alongside the Carnegie
    Endowment admits “financial support” from CUSEF fueled the endeavor. As Chen Dongxiao,
    President of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, buries in the 61-page report:

    “I also hope that SIIS and Carnegie will continue to conduct joint research around U.S.-China
    cybersecurity issues and make greater contributions to U.S.-China relations. As always,
    Shanghai Institute for International Studies is grateful for financial support from the China-
    United States Exchange Foundation to help SIIS taskforces conduct joint research on U.S.-China
    relations, including this pathbreaking work with Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.”

    The paper itself focuses on tackling “cyber threats to nuclear command, control, and
    communications systems” – despite Chinese Communist Party entities routinely conducting
    cyberattacks against U.S. interests, including government agencies.

    Mr. President, it would appear that Mr. Burns lied under oath about what he himself described as
    “Chinese influence operations.” Contrary to his testimony before the Senate Select Committee on
    Intelligence on February 24, 2021 – on the basis of which that panel voted unanimously for his
    confirmation, the Carnegie Endowment continued to engage directly and/or indirectly with one of
    the most prominent of those entities: the China-United States Exchange Foundation. Indeed,
    Carnegie jointly sponsored with the Shanghai Institute for International Studies a project funded by
    CUSEF aimed at influencing U.S. cyber security policy with respect to a singularly sensitive military
    function: nuclear forces command and control.

    Mr. Burns’ testimony is also belied by the fact that in 2016 he welcomed Zhang Yichen to the
    Carnegie Endowment’s Board of Trustees. Mr. Zhang is the CEO of CITIC Capital Holdings, a

    2
    subsidiary of CITIC Group, a state-owned investment enterprise. He has given over a million dollars
    to the Endowment in recent years. He is also tied to not one, but two, Chinese influence
    operations: the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the Center for China and
    Globalization.

    The website of a Chinese embassy depicts the CPPCC as a “United Front organization under the
    leadership of the Communist Party of China” that is “actively engaged in exchanges with foreign
    countries for the purpose of strengthening the friendship with people in foreign countries.” The
    Center for China and Globalization is “a Beijing-based think tank also linked to the communist
    apparatus.”

    Worse yet, Mr. Zhang’s contributions enabled the Endowment to establish the Carnegie-Tsinghua
    Center at Tsinghua University in 2010. As Senator Marco Rubio noted in his questioning of Mr.
    Burns during the February 24th hearing, the highly regarded Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s
    China Defense Universities Tracker rates “Tsinghua University [as] very high risk for its high level of
    defense research and alleged involvement in cyberattacks [including against the United States].”

    The Chinese themselves describe Tsinghua University’s role this way: “In advancing military-civil
    fusion, Tsinghua also continues its ‘fine tradition’ of serving China’s national security and defense,
    actively creating new platforms and initiatives to support this strategy.”

    In short, Mr. Burns actually had no problem with his organization being associated with Chinese
    influence operations long after he became its president. He was, moreover, clearly comfortable
    with having one of its operatives in a key leadership position. And he allowed the Endowment to
    do business with an actual arm of the People’s Liberation Army unless, as he told the Senate, its
    fellows at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center are unable to “conduct independent research.”

    Mr. Burn’s record contradicts his testimony about being worried about Chinese influence
    operations, shows he ignored the risks of partnering with them and bespeaks both a lack of
    awareness about Chinese tradecraft and judgment that could be serious national security risks at
    the CIA.

    For all these reasons, we urge you to ask immediately for the resignation of William Burns as
    Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

    Sincerely,

    Brian T. Kennedy, Chairman, Committee on the Present Danger, China; President, American
    Strategy Group
    Frank J. Gaffney, Vice Chairman, Committee on the Present Danger, China; former Assistant
    Secretary of Defense (Acting)
    Hon. William Bennett, former Secretary of Education and Drug Czar
    Hon. Ed Timperlake, former Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs
    Hon. Chadwick Gore, former Assistant Secretary of State (Acting)
    Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin, U.S. Army (Ret.), former Deputy Under Secretary of
    Defense for Intelligence

    3
    Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), former Assistant Chief of Staff,
    United States Air Force
    Lieutenant General Steven Kwast, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), former Commander, Air Education and
    Training Command
    Hon. Kenneth deGraffenreid, former Deputy National Counterintelligence Executive
    Bradley Johnson, former Chief of Station, Central Intelligence Agency
    Charles “Sam” Faddis, former Clandestine Services Officer and Director of the Office of Weapons
    of Mass Destruction Terrorism, Central Intelligence Agency
    Colonel Robert Maness, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), former Vice Commander, 55th Airborne
    Intelligence Wing
    Colonel John Mills, U.S. Army (Ret.), former Director, Cybersecurity Policy, Strategy, and
    International Affairs, Office of the Secretary of Defense
    Dr. Peter Pry, former Chief of Staff, Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse Commission
    Richard Manning, former Public Affairs Chief, U.S. Department of Labor
    Dr. Anders Corr, Principal, Journal of Political Risk
    Mark Helprin, author and essayist
    Chet Nagle, former Executive Director, Committee on the Present Danger
    Suzanne Scholte, President, Defense Forum Foundation
    Maura Moynihan, former Radio Free Asia/Nepal bureau chief
    Kevin Freeman, founder, National Security Consultants Institute
    Sean Lin, Ph.D., Survivor, Tiananmen Square Massacre

    cc: Hon. Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States


    Hon. Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor to the President
    Hon. Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence
    Hon. Mark Warner, Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
    Hon. Marco Rubio, Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
    Hon. Adam Schiff, Chairman, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
    Hon. Devin Nunes, Ranking Member, House Permanent Select Committee on
    Intelligence

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